Reparations Suits Target Big Cos.

Published 3:06 pm, Monday, April 25, 2016

Lawsuits charging that three companies profited from the slave trade are just the beginning of a larger legal effort to seek reparations for American blacks who are descendants of slaves.

More than a dozen of the nation's most prominent black attorneys and scholars expect to file suit against the U.S. government later this year, said Randall Robinson, co-chairman of the Reparations Coordinating Committee.

"The centerpiece of the campaign will unfold in the fall," said Robinson, whose book "The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks," argues for reparations. "We're talking about the responsibility of the government that participates in a crime against humanity."

The group is still working out details such as whether there will be a single lawsuit or multiple ones, the city where suits should be filed and what form reparations should take, members said.

The high-powered team building the case includes Harvard University professors Charles Ogletree and Cornel West and attorneys Johnnie Cochran and Willie Gary.

The group has been meeting every few months for about two years; another meeting is scheduled this month, University of Maryland political scientist and committee member Ronald Walters said.

"This group came together because they wanted to bring the full force of the African-American leadership behind this effort," Walters said.

Last week, three slave descendants filed suit against Aetna insurance company, FleetBoston Financial Corp. and railroad giant CSX on behalf of themselves and millions of other blacks, claiming the companies _ or their corporate predecessors _ unjustly profited from slavery.

Ed Fagan, who worked on those suits, and other attorneys plan to file more suits in the next few months against businesses in the merchant banking and tobacco industries, along with European insurance companies. He said about 60 companies will be named.

Yet another effort _ this one by the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America _ may also result in lawsuits against the government and the private sector, said Adjoa Aiyetoro, the group's chief legal counsel and a member of the reparations committee. The national coalition has been working on developing lawsuits since 1997, and began advocating for reparations a decade before that.

At the heart of the reparations movement is the idea that modern-day disparities between blacks and whites, in everything from education to income, are the legacy of slavery.

"There is a straight line from slavery to the socio-economic and psychological conditions of African-Americans today," Walters said.

Slavery unfairly shifted wealth from blacks to whites, said reparations committee member Richard America, a lecturer at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business.

"Whites are unjustly enriched today as a class," America said. "They have income and wealth that should have gone to blacks and was diverted by force, fraud, manipulation, exploitation and expropriation."

Those who oppose reparations say they could cause greater racial divisions and that many Americans today have no connection to slavery.

Advocates are still discussing what form reparations should take.

"My feeling is there shouldn't be checks given to people," said Robinson, who recently wrote "The Reckoning," another book about the consequences of slavery. "I'm thinking about reparations as a measure of repair, as opposed to restitution to people of what was lost in income."

Richard America said some federal tax revenues should be directed to help blacks to buy houses, fund education and buy or expand businesses. Reparations should focus on the poorest blacks, though all are entitled to reparations, he said.

Proponents of reparations hope the lawsuits will spark a national conversation about race relations and the impacts of slavery.

"A lawsuit is merely the legal side of the struggle to bring the whole question of slavery to the surface," said Selma, Ala., civil rights attorney and reparations committee member J.L. Chestnut, Jr.

The idea, he said, is to "have black and white alike acknowledge a sad past, and for once be truthful and get on from it."